ch has an aunt who falls into this category. she lives in the old farmhouse she has grown up in. she's approximately 55 and has married twice...the first one was never herrrrrrrrrrrr fault, yet i'm pretty sure she said yes in a booze induced fuzz and married a beater who broke her fingers. the divorce or annulment was done quickly and quietly and she retreated back to her mother's busom. a few years later, she married another boozer and was married about 10 yrs or so. maybe less. it's irrelevant. they never had kids and moved into the farmhouse. history's unclear at this point whether they were living with her parents or not, but i do know that the parents moved to the city in 1980. i suspect that the newlyweds didnt have a pot to piss in, but they sure found pots to drink out of if you catch my drift.
a nasty divorce later, she was alone on that farm and slowly took it over. in the years following her divorce, the farm fell to rack and ruin around her. she had been injured in a car crash that left her on piddly amounts of disability and lord only knows how she made a living or continues to make one. in the meantime, she had accumulated loads of things in the house. every grainery and quancet is filled with old items to the roof. items that are meant to be given to someone, but have never quite got there.
worse yet is that nobody's allowed in the farmhouse. people used to go out there to have elaborate dinners and finish the harvest, but slowly this aunt's mental illness took over and she chased people out. if the men go there to help her, she wont let them in the house to go to the bathroom or wash their hands. no, i'm not kidding. this kind of behaviour has been going on for years and people have silently followed her wishes. she is also, not surprisingly, a very nasty person. she likes only certain people in the family. yours truly doesnt fall into that category, even tho the only thing i've done to her in the years i've known her is not answered when she's called. big whoop. i made the mistake of answering once and asking her if she wanted to speak to ch, and she snapped at me, "how do you know i wasnt calling to talk to you". uhm, okaaaaaaay. i'm pretty sure that if ch had answered, you wouldnt have asked for me. i wish that i had the balls to say that back then. of course i didnt say anything. dammit, i hate myself for being such a pansy at times.
so they want to move this aunt to my city, which is about an hour from the farm. if you know packrats, they dont like change and they most certainly dont want people touching their "things". this aunt has been bucking the possibilty of moving for years now, always throwing out excuses. the inlaws, in all their buttinsky wisdom, have just decided that they're going to buy a condo and TELL her she's moving. no asking, no pleading, no informing the authorities, just telling her she's going. uhm, if you see a huge mushroom shaped cloud on the eastern horizon, that will be the aunt.
so then this morning i started talking to ch about the aunt and he is in deep deep denial over what will happen. i started telling him that the sole responsibility of looking after her will fall on his and his shoulders alone and that's not fair of his parents to just put that on him. he then kinda jokingly countered that the sil will do it and i said HELL NO (wanting to add that she cant even mop up f-ing water in her basement or kill a spider on her own without calling in ch to do it). then i asked him who they think will be expected to run over there every time there is a problem, so then he says to me that he thinks that auntie crazy will slow down once she moves here, that she will stop trying to be overtaxed with things at the farm the way she is with maintaining the sistern and garden etc...i said that i doubt she even does 1/2 of that the way she claims. then he started telling me that she will slow down and relax and maybe hopefully do crafts. i told him that you can not unbreed 50+ yrs of dysfunctional behaviour and neurotic tendancies, that it will only be a matter of time before she's flooding the tub or starting fires so she "oooooops, has to move back to the farm".
i then asked him how they expect to take her out of the house willingly, because unless they can prove without a doubt that the house is either A)unliveable and should be condemned or B) unsafe, then they have no case. and if those arent true, they then have to prove that she is incapeable of looking after and is a danger to herself and needs someone to be the power of attourney. it all fell on deaf ears; he didnt want to hear it, but goddammit, it's true. they can not legally go in there and tell her she has to move unless they can prove she is crazier than shit, capeable of harming herself, or the house is unsuitable for human life. and quite honestly, they wont go and prove the last one because i have a feeling they'll want to restore it and use it because nobody's been allowed in the god damned thing. who knows how damaged the upstairs is or even if it can be repaired.
it's all a sticky mess. i had thought of saying something to the mil and fil tonight and asking them to reconsider their decision for ch's sake, not for the aunt. for once to think of ch and his health and sanity. christ, buy her a condo in calgary then...but NO, they wont do thaaaaaat. just lump it all on ch and expect him to do it all. why not? nevermind there are 5 siblings in that family, 4 of which live in canada to help her. but no, throw her on ch. it's almost as if they are punishing us because we dont have kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiids or something. implying that we have nobody else to worry about, so they can just lump auntie pack rat onto us and call it ok because we arent tied down to any other life forms.
i think the inlaws just figure that everything will be ticketty boo if she moves here and they can carry on. unfortunately our city is close enough to the crazy farm that it would be easy for this aunt to flood her condo and ruin it and have to move home.
i just predict months of agony with this. months of endless phonecalls from the inlaws to go check on the aunt because she's slammed her hand in a door/lit the place on fire/flooded toilets, and nights of us being there in the wee hours of the morning mopping floors all while she sits there and either sobs her head off or snarks and bites out orders.
i'm telling ya, that woman doesnt exist in my world. i cant stand her, nor can i stand the way she treats the entire family. even just the whole "you cant use my bathroom" bullshit is fucking insane and irrational. if someone comes out there to help, you're damned right they're going to GET to use that bathroom. we do her favours and yet she acts as if we are taking things from her when we enter her house. i refuse to go to the farm anymore if she is there and i've made that clear to the fil, even if it is his sister. it's true and he knows it.
and forget about the sil helping ch if and when crisies happen. both her and aunt crazy are protective and jealous of ch's time and will fight back and forth for it. the aunt doesnt like the sil. i think they are carbon images of each other, just a couple of decades separate them. the sil is one serious car crash away from being the aunt.
what i cant stand is how the family wont punish people or make them accountable for treating others badly. they turn a blind eye to all of it. the aunt has consistently treated the mil poorly, yet the fil just disregards it and goes out there to do work. i just cant stand how the aunt and now the sil are not accountable for how they treat everyone. it's deemed ok for them to behave the way they do. it's beyond ridiculous.
oh and even creepier is that ch's great aunt (the crazy aunt's aunt) also was a spinster packrat who lived in her parents' home in saskatchewan and had it piled to the rafters with junk. people talk quietly about this, but nobody dares to draw the parallels. to me, it's glaringly obvious that we have another crazy nutjob on our hands.
and like the edies said in grey gardens, the only way they'll drag the crazy aunt off the farm is feet first.
trust.
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